Four Walls and a Roof: Brecht Meets Beirut Émigrés
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- Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué are performing an illustrated lecture at Edinburgh's Studio Theatre that frames Bertolt Brecht's life in exile as a lens on contemporary displacement.
- The work draws on Brecht's notion of "cold execution" — destroying opponents by cutting them off from work rather than killing them directly, as practiced by the House Un-American Activities Committee against blacklisted artists.
- The pair highlight that Brecht fled Germany after the 1933 Reichstag burning and spent eight years crossing land and sea to reach the US, yet his readmission to Europe after HUAC questioned his communist affiliations took only a day.
- Henrik Kairies accompanies the lecture on piano, performing songs by Brecht and composer Hanns Eisler.
- As émigrés from Beirut to Berlin, Majdalanie and Mroué draw on their own experience to argue homeland means more than "four walls and a roof."
- The performance draws a pointed parallel between HUAC's refusal to let Brecht read his statement on Nazi crackdowns on free speech and today's far-right resurgence.
- The show runs at the Studio Theatre, Edinburgh, until 17 August.
Why it matters: By splicing Brecht's Cold War-era persecution into a present-day far-right context, two Beirut-to-Berlin émigrés turn a historical theatre lecture into a warning about how democratic societies silence artists without firing a shot — making the run, which closes 17 August at Edinburgh's Studio Theatre, a small but timely stage for arguments about exile and censorship that resonate beyond the Fringe.
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